CFP: [Science] Rhetorics of Plague: Early / Modern Trajectories of Biohazard

The threat of biological catastropheâ€"including that by AIDS, ebola, irreversible global warming,avian influenza, and species extinctionâ€"may seem the specific and daunting provenance of late20th- and early 21st â€"century life, but it has in fact been a crucial part of history since ancienttimes. It is important to remember, for instance, that starting in the 14th century and extendingwell into the 18th, the bubonic plague (as the Black Death) ultimately took the lives of at least35% of the entire population in Europe, as well as nearly that much in central Asia, killing anestimated total of 75 million people. Given these numbers, it could be argued that premodernand early modern cultures had even more at stake in articulating the role of plagueâ€"not tomention the related phenomena of cholera, syphilis, small pox, the so-called English SweatingSickness, or extensive urban infestations, which are only a few of the shockwaves that precededour own anxiety about spectacular biological disaster. This symposium therefore proposesrethinking the connections among recent models, representations, or biocultures of biologicalthreat and their counterparts in the pre- and early modern eras.

A focus on the â€œrhetoricsâ€ of plague highlights the ways in which biological danger becomesconceptually organized, ethically ordered, or socio-politically oriented by the discourses thatrepresent it. It can also underscore the crossing or hybridization of discourses, such as the waysin which early views of medical pandemic, in the absence of a theory of germ contagion, couldbe linked to models of ecological or environmental dysfunction, or the manner in which diseaseof the body natural could metaphorize the maladies of the body politic. Furthermore, inaddition to accounting for the interrelated scientific, literary, or philosophical conventionsinvoked by such discourses, it is important to acknowledge that, like the biological volatility theydescribe, discourses about plague can undergo their own kind of exponential proliferation,producing a potential plague of rhetorics. While such discourses may have predominantlyoriginated in the metropolitan centers of Europe, there is also the need to account for theirtransformation or mutation when applied in non-Western or colonial contexts, as well as for theemergence of counter-discourses from non-European sourcesâ€"such as China or the Middle Eastâ€"that may have challenged European models of pandemic explanation, particularly as they haveundergirded imperial ambitions.

The University at Albany, SUNY, calls for proposals that forge connections between 21st-centurycontexts and pre- and early modern periods (up to ca.1820) as a way to foster fruitfulconversations across disciplinary, national, ethnic, geographical, and historical boundaries.Papers may take up recent work on biohazards, for example, to rethink responses to plague inearly periods; conversely, papers may consider what early manifestations of and responses toplague tell us about current pandemic episodes, whether real or imagined, including biohazardas political trope. We welcome approaches from the sciences, social sciences, arts, andhumanities and encourage cross-cultural and transhistorical work; papers focusing on biohazarddiscourses prior to the nineteenth century are particularly desirable. We encourage contributionsfrom graduate students or nonacademics who may be working in areas such as the history ofmedicine, healthcare, and ecological analysis.

All participants in the symposium will have the opportunity to submit expanded versions of theirpresentations for consideration as part of a special journal issue planned for publication. Moredetails will soon appear on the symposium website.

â€¢ The multiplicity of diseases as generator for â€œplagues of rhetoricâ€â€"uncontrolled proliferationof competing definitions, descriptions, or discourses; or, in turn, the disseminating tendencies ofscientific discourse as an engine for an exponential explosion of apparent symptoms, biologicalentities, ecological effects.

â€¢ The investment of medical or ecological models of pandemic thinking in juridical, legal,political, literary, social, educational, or other pre- and early modern domains.

â€¢ The role of pandemic rhetoric in the management of early modern colonial enterprise orimperial conquest; the relevance of similar biological discourses in postcolonial or recentlyglobalized contexts.

â€¢ The function of counter-discourses of pandemic that emerged from non-Western sourcesâ€"China, the Middle East, the South Pacific, etc.â€"in response to European scientific, political, orcolonial efforts.